John Caldwell Calhoun

John Caldwell Calhoun (born the March 18th 1782 in South Carolina and deceased the March 31st 1850 with Washington D.C) is important a American Politicien during first half of half of the 19th century. It is the first Vice-président of the United States of America to being born on the American ground.

Biography

First years

John Caldwell Calhoun is born in the Comté from Abbeville in South Carolina on March 18th, 1782. He is the third child of Patrick and Martha Caldwell Calhoun, farmers. He grows in one time of social disturbances, in particular because of the extension of the culture of the Coton which brings with it the practice of the Esclavage in the States where the small farmers still oppose to the agrarian big landowners. The publication of the Sedition Act by the president John Adams in 1798 and the resolutions against this law written by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will cause at Calhoum the awakening that states (the Kentucky and the Virginia in this case) can declare federal laws anticonstitutional. This revelation will be later a big part in the political philosophy of Calhun.

In 1796, his/her father falls seriously sick. He then stops his studies to deal with the management of the family farm. He holds this role during five years before his/her James brother takes the changing. He turns over then to the Willington Academy, then is registered with Yale in 1801. He leaves graduate with the honors in 1804, finishes there his formation at the school of right of Litchfield in the Connecticut and east admitted at the bar of South Carolina in 1807. He then exerts his lawyer trade in his district of origin.

Of 1809 with 1811, it deals with several businesses concerning the distribution of the capacities between the rich person growers of cotton and the farmers poorer. It ensures its financial future and enters the political world by marrying his cousin, Florida Bonneau (which will be later in the center of the Affaire Petticoat), girl of the senator John Ewing Colhoon, with whom it will have ten children, of which three die in low age.

He is elected like democratic republican with the Congrès of the United States of America of the March 4th 1811 with the November 3rd 1817. For this period, it is pointed out like an influencing member of the nationalist group directed by Henry Clay calling with the war against the England. He makes the speech of introduction to the declaration of the Guerre of 1812 and, for all the period of the conflict, pushes without slackening for the vote of appropriations additional servicemen.

At the end of the war, he works with Clay with the installation of the American System , vast set of measures having to ensure the financial independence of the United States. Within this framework, he proposes the installation of the Bonus Bill , a programme of financing of constructions of highways. This proposal will be refused by the president James Monroe. This last, in 1817, proposes to him the post of secretary to the War after the refusal of Isaac Shelby. It remains at this station until in 1825 and, during these years, reorganizes the military system and contributes to the widening of the borders in direction of the West.

Vice-presidencies

The presidential elections of 1824 are particularly disputed. Calhoun successful finally to find an agreement between the various factions and makes elect John Quincy Adams as president and itself like vice-president. However, it is not long in taking its distances with Adams, only it judges too favorable to the interests of the states of North. In 1826, the Calhoun family buys a plantation in the district of Pendleton which, thereafter, will be known under the name of Fort Hill .

During this time, an economic serious attack shakes the States of the South, mainly because of the production of cheaper cotton coming from the new States of South-west, but also, according to the growers, because of the official ceilings of price of cotton perceived by the Southerners like a protectionist measurement in favor of textile industries of North. Lastly, this framework already tended still will worsen by the discovery of a deep North-South division on the question of slavery.

Calhoun is highly opposed to the establishment of these ceilings of price as of 1824 and starts to develop, first of all in an anonymous way, then in a document of 1828 called South Carolina Exposition , the political theory of Nullification , supporting that a minority (a State for example) is in right to protect itself from the decision of a majority (country) by cancelling ( nullify ) the laws which he considers contrary with his own legislation. In the following years, it goes even further, recommending that a State can, where necessary, to withdraw Union simply.

With the following elections, Calhoun supports Andrew Jackson and, when this last is elected, the March 4th 1829, it is again named vice-president. However, once more, the relationship between Calhoun and the president will suffer from their various points of view between Nordiste and Southerner.

In 1832, the theory of Calhoun is put into practice by the State of South Carolina which declares anticonstitutional the laws fixing the ceiling price of cotton. This decision will cause a major, known political crisis under the name of Nullification Crisis . The response of the Congress to this decision will be the vote of an act (the Force Bill ) which gives to the President the possibility of engaging the army of the Union to force the States to obey the federal laws. Of course, the government of South Carolina nullified this act.

The President ordered the sending of warships in the port of Charleston. Fortunately, the crisis found a solution in a compromise, suggested by the senator Clay in 1833, which modifies the prices of cotton according to the desires of the Southerners. However, the rupture between Calhoun and Jackson is consumed and, the December 28th 1832, Calhoun resigns of its post of Vice-president.

The Senate and debates on slavery

The day of its resignation, Calhoun first of all accepts the station of senator to replace Robert Y. Hayne like democrat-republican, then under the label Nullifier . He will be re-elected respectively in 1834 and 1840 until his resignation the March 3rd 1843.

During these years, it will direct the movement pro-slavery which is opposed at the same time to the free trade current and the various proposals aiming at extending this practice in the States of the West. Whereas certain deputies present slavery like a “necessary evil”, Calhoun, in a become speech celebrates marked in February 1837, defends the slave system like a good. Building its argumentation on two topics, the supremacy of the white race and paternalism, it affirms there its idea according to which any company must be directed by an elite being able to benefit from the work of the lower groups. It takes however distances with the European situation where, according to him, the situation of the slaves is quite worse than in the United States.

It defends in same time the right of the States of the South to preserve their slave practices in the name of freedom and of self-determination. Paradoxically, the theories of Calhoun on the right of the minorities will be taken again later by ethnicities (such as the Afro-américain S) to claim protections against the decisions of the majority.

Lastly, it supports various measurements aiming to continue and return the escaped slaves. It is one of the principal defenders of the Fugitive Slavic Act , written by James Mason which proposes the creation of a police force especially dedicated to the research of the escaped slaves.

The work of Calhoun on the question of slavery will have a big role on the increase in the tensions between North and the South, tensions which finally will lead to the American Civil War a few years later.

Last years and recognition

In 1844, it leaves the Senate to become the Secretary of State of the president John Tyler during one year. He is then elected again with the Senate, this time for the democratic party to replace Daniel E. Huger. Reached Tuberculosis, he dies on March 31st, 1850 before the end of his mandate and is buried with the cemetery of Charleston.

After its death, Calhoun receives more the great honors through various generations. However, its keen defense of the slave system in fact a discussed character. During the American Civil War, the government Southerner creates a Timbre-poste with the effigy of Calhoun which will never be published. It is also honoured at the university with Yale which makes set up a statue of him and of which one of the buildings is called Calhoun College , which causes, in a recurring way, of the requests of students to re-elect it.

The Université of Clemson also forms part of the heritage of Calhoun. The campus of this university is indeed built on the site of Fort Hill , the plantation of Calhoun which it bequeaths, with its death, with his/her son-in-law Thomas Green Clemson (who serves a few years like Ambassadeur in Belgium thanks to the support of his father-in-law). In 1888, with died of his wife, Clemson draws up her will in which it bequeaths the plantation to the State to make a university dedicated to agriculture of it.

In 1957, the senators return to homage to Calhoun as being the “ fifth more important senator of all times ”. A resolution of the same Senate of 2000 off names it in the list of the “ seven greatest all time ”.

Many places were thereafter named in the honor of John Calhoun, among whom:

11 counties
10 cities
1 lake (Lake Calhoun in the State of the Mississippi).

Publications

The Papers off John C. Calhoun Published by Clyde NR. Wilson; 28 volumes, University off South Carolina Near, 1969-2003.
Calhoun, John C. ED. H. Lee Cheek, Jr. Calhoun: Selected Writings and Speeches (Conservative Leadership Series) , 2003. ISBN 0895261790
Calhoun, John C. ED. Ross Mr. Lence, Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy off John C. Calhoun , 1992. ISBN 0865971021

See too

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